Convenience is King for Millennials in Customer Service

Millennials often get saddled with a negative reputation. But now that this generation has become the single largest age group in the U.S. workforce, and is projected to spend $1.4 trillion annually by 2020, they are a force that businesses can’t afford to overlook. As the first generation of digital natives to enter the workforce, they changed how businesses interact with customers, forcing these companies to rethink how to deliver exceptional customer service.

To be successful, companies must understand this generation of spenders and what their priorities are. Convenience is king for Millennials. While voice is still a key medium for contact centers, it slips in the hierarchy of channels for Millennials, who rank alternative channels over voice according to an Orange Silicon Valley survey:

Digital

Social

Apps

Voice

Perhaps more importantly, nearly three-quarters of Millennials say that “valuing my time” is the most important factor in meeting customer service expectations. What does that mean for your customer service teams? Here are a few tips for more effectively engaging with your Millennial customers and giving them the experience they expect.

Self Service

Millennials are accustomed to using digital resources to solve problems on their own and prefer self service to calling customer service. Knowing that, design your digital tools to drive self service resolution and avoid the call. That includes everything from well-designed FAQ sections on your sites and intuitive account management via web and mobile apps, and automated outbound notifications and well-designed chatbots. Understanding what the most common questions and issues are is critical to designing the most efficient self service capabilities. The more solutions you are able to provide through self service, the fewer calls your contact center will have to handle, allowing your agents to focus on more effectively handling those situations that do result in calls. The efficiency of self service will allow all your customers, including Millennials, to resolve their issues when it’s convenient for them, which includes times outside normal working hours.

Text Message

Consider that more than 22 billion text messages are sent each day globally (not including app-to-app messaging like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger). Add to that the fact that 90 percent of consumers would like to be able to engage businesses via text message, and Millennials’ preference for digital channels, and you have a solid case for text- and chat-enabled customer service. Messaging has the benefit of engaging customers in near-real time, allows customers to engage easily in situations where voice may be an inconvenience, but doesn’t come with a character limit, like Twitter. Chat-enabled websites and apps, along with SMS, give Millennials more digital options for solving issues conveniently. Importantly, these interactions can easily be added to customer records for future reference and data collected can be used to create even more effective self service capabilities. Text is no longer a pure consumer-to-consumer tool – it’s time to make it part of your customer strategy.

Social Presence

There’s no question social media is a part of the customer experience today, and while it allows direct engagement with customers, it’s often accomplished in a public forum. But, understanding that Millennials are a sharing generation and Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social channels have become mobile-friendly channels for interacting with customers, especially when they have initiated a conversation. What’s important is to be able to track those conversations through customer records and to switch to more personal one-on-one channels when the need arises. Often, customers use social channels to get a company’s attention – especially when they are displeased with products or services – but many times the problem can’t be easily resolved without escalating to chat or email, or even voice or video.

It’s important to track both positive and negative engagements to develop a deeper understanding of customer experiences in general, and to identify opportunities for improvement, whether on the product side or customer service side. See how a customer engagement solution can help you reach every generation of customer.

Chris is a 15-year creative services veteran, with a background in copywriting, content management and graphic design. She works with the Aspect marketing and product teams developing digital assets (like infographics and ebooks) to help businesses make smart customer contact decisions.